Science, Fiction, and the Fin-de-Si?cle Periodical Press [Paperback]

Explores the first appearance of 'science fiction' in the pages of late nineteenth-century general interest periodicals.This fascinating study explores the ways in which fin-de-si?cle periodicals portrayed science, both imaginatively and intellectually. It shows how general interest magazines and those who wrote for them, particularly H. G. Wells, contributed to the birth of a new genre: science fiction.This fascinating study explores the ways in which fin-de-si?cle periodicals portrayed science, both imaginatively and intellectually. It shows how general interest magazines and those who wrote for them, particularly H. G. Wells, contributed to the birth of a new genre: science fiction.In this revisionary study, Will Tattersdill argues against the reductive 'two cultures' model of intellectual discourse by exploring the cultural interactions between literature and science embodied in late nineteenth-century periodical literature, tracing the emergence of the new genre that would become known as 'science fiction'. He examines a range of fictional and non-fictional fin-de-si?cle writing around distinct scientific themes: Martian communication, future prediction, X-rays, and polar exploration. Every chapter explores a major work of H. G. Wells, but also presents a wealth of exciting new material drawn from a variety of late Victorian periodicals. Arguing that the publications in which they appeared, as well as the stories themselves, played a crucial part in the development of science fiction, Tattersdill uses the form of the general interest magazine as a way of understanding the relationship between the arts and the sciences, and the creation of a new literary genre.Introduction: material entanglements; 1. Intrinsic intelligibility; 2. Distance over time; 3. New photography; 4. Further northward; Conclusion: bad science and the study of English; Bibliography.'& engaging and convincing & Tattersdill demonstrates that the cultural voices of literature and science are nols'